Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

END OF THE BEGINNING OF THE END PART 2

By Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall
November 20, 2016
NewsWithViews.com

How to Get Non-establishment
Candidates Elected

One thing Tea Party and Liberty
Action and Citizens for Liberty groups can learn from the 2016 election is that
traditional methods of getting non-traditional candidates elected to office do
not work. We in Colorado learned that when a wonderful candidate, Darryl Glenn,
ran against U.S. Senate incumbent Michael Bennett, a Democrat and a loser, and
lost.

Donald Trump was a non-traditional
candidate who could afford to run his own campaign his own way and he did it
with great skill. He started with Corey Lewandowski, a non-traditional campaign
manager. He moved to Paul Manafort, a traditionalist who served as campaign
manager for a brief time. He moved on to KellyAnne Conway who has a good
balance of the two methodologies, understanding both traditional and
non-traditional campaign strategies.

But what about non-traditional
candidates who aren’t billionaires able to fund their own political campaigns?
They need non-traditional candidate campaign managers who can get them known to
voters without spending a lot of money – and they are non-existent. What an
opportunity this presents to the Tea Party and other groups to learn about
non-traditional candidates and how to get them elected and provide help to
future constitutional populist candidates!

What does a non-traditional campaign
manager (NTCM) know about getting someone elected that is missing from the
handbook of a traditional campaign manager?

First, NTCMs understand they will
not have access to Republican funding, especially for primary elections or
general elections. RNC money will go to candidates selected and controlled by
the RNC or State Republican Party, just as it always has. It's how the Party
controls candidates once elected to office. Traditional campaign managers are
used to having access to money for advertising and large staffs.
Non-traditional candidates do not have these luxuries. Hillary Clinton spent
huge amounts of money on advertising and staff compared to Donald Trump.

Local candidates are not
billionaires... and politics at the RNC level haven’t changed just because
Donald Trump beat them at their own game. Trump’s ability to fly to campaign
gatherings in his own plane was a huge advantage... but candidates for state
office don’t have to fly coast to coast. They must drive from city to city.
It’s a pain in the neck (butt) and it takes a lot of late night driving and
one-night motel stays. But it can be and has been done.

I will keep reminding you that you
will never gain any ground at changing the national political mess until you
regain control of your local political structure. Actually, you get congrats
from me on this topic because Republicans not only have majorities in the House
and Senate and a Republican is now in the Executive office in Washington, D.C.,
they also have 35 governorships and dominate most state legislatures. You’re
doing what needs to be done to take back our country from the socialists!

The biggest difficulty
non-traditional candidates have is making sure voters who live in the cities in
which they campaign know who they are and what their platform is. They need
publicity to get their message out so voters can consider them serious
candidates. How do you achieve that with limited funds?

1.
Most NTCMs assume they will write fabulously interesting press releases and
local reporters will publish/broadcast them. WRONG!

First, if your candidate is a
Republican you will get no help from the local media most of whom are committed
Democrats. Understand this: In America, there are 1,500 newspapers, 1,100
magazines, 9,000 radio stations, 1500 television stations and 2,400 publishers.

Almost all of them are owned by these 6 corporations: General Electric,
Newscorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. If you (or a mutual fund in
which you are invested) owns stock in any of these companies, you are
supporting companies that want to destroy the sovereignty of America.

Second,
newspapers and television news are in business to publish... news. The fact
that a political candidate comes (or is coming) to town is not necessarily
news. Does the candidate have something to say that can be defined as news? Is
it something that hasn’t been said and reported before? If so, it may be worth
a paragraph or two... but if there’s an accident on the local freeway, that’s
where reporters will go. Their job is local news.

All of the wonderful comments
traditional campaign managers make in their press releases are viewed by the
media as advertising, not news. And they are usually right. If you want to
advertise, pay the price (which is what non-traditional candidates can’t afford
to do). So what do you do to get your candidate known? How do you get the local
newspaper and broadcast news to cover your candidate?

Rather than talking about things,
non-traditional candidates must do things. What the candidate does is dependent
on his or her issues.

Let’s use Donald Trump as an
example. He supports better medical care for our veterans. He could have
improved his approval ratings among both Republicans and Democrats had he
talked less and... visited VA hospitals and talked with veterans about the care
they receive.

That’s news. It is worth coverage. It’s important to invite local
reporters to accompany the candidate. It is also important to have carefully
crafted questions to ask patients as well as VA hospital administrators. Not
only does it get coverage, it strikes a chord with voters that this candidate
really means what he or she says and is not just spouting words.

Donald Trump visited my Western
Colorado home twice during his campaign. We have one of the best VA hospitals
in the country. I have never heard a negative comment about it. He could have
gained much support nationally by visiting the place for an hour, telling the
public he wants to know what this hospital does that makes it so much better
than other VA facilities. This kind of detailed communication must exist
between the candidate and those working in counties in areas where candidates
compete for votes -- and publicity.

One of the first things you do once
you establish people who volunteer to help your candidate get elected in
various cities is create a questionnaire for volunteers to complete.

Their answers
should tell you about their city... what’s different about it, what government
offices are located there, the average age of residents, etc. Pay attention to
that information.

Schedule publicity events (like visits to a VA Hospital)
around those things that are part of the communities you visit. If a town has a
large senior community, visit assisted care and hospice facilities, e.g. Talk
with people. Ask them questions... ask them how you can help.

2.
Spend your limited funds on things important to your base, not to you. For
example, purchase (at a very low cost per copy) copies of the Constitution and
pass them out at your campaign gatherings. By doing so, you make a statement
about yourself that sticks with people.

Conservatives have three things in
common: 1) They are constitutionalists; 2) They make decisions based on
truth/facts; and 3) They support the Rule of Law that flows from the
Constitution. They will love getting a copy of the Constitution to carry in
their pockets or purses – especially if it has a brief message on page one from
a political candidate.

3.
Establish volunteers as committee chairmen and have them recruit four or five
people to sit on those committees. What committees? What are your candidate’s
issues? Use them pro-actively by establishing committees, one per issue.

Stop talking about the shameful
Veterans Administration Hospitals and begin doing something about it. One
suggestion was made above, but what else can you do?

Start with an 800 telephone number
where vets in the state your candidate is running for office can call when they
are not getting the quality care they have earned. Invite those who have
received quality care to call, too. Create a questionnaire and have your Veterans
committee volunteers contact those people having problems. Gather data (on
computer). Report on results periodically. This is a very inexpensive exercise
run by volunteers and offers maximum results. You will need a tech person to
put it all together. Find a volunteer techie.

It is action rather than words. It
is newsworthy. It gets your candidate known. Even more important, it positions
your candidate as a person who takes action and makes it possible to reference
your opposition as someone who talks but does nothing... takes no action on
promises made.

If
you are a law and order candidate (most conservatives are), recruit people who
are known by the public to support the rule of law. You are surrounded by
talent that can be put into action when you manage the campaign of a law and
order candidate.

Have your law and order candidate
coordinate volunteers in each county to answer an 800 number where all people
of all races can report police abuse. Also invite those who have positive
experiences with law enforcement to report what happened. This can be promoted
on television and radio as public service announcements. Promise to look into
negative incidents. Have volunteers contact those who make negative reports and
create a questionnaire that will give your campaign information. Again, this is
newsworthy. It gets your candidate known and is viewed positively by all
members of the public, particularly minorities.

Does the candidate oppose gun
control?

Establish a committee to coordinate
a program with the National Rifle Association (if it has endorsed your
candidate) to install an 800 number that accepts reports from people who have
successfully used a firearm in self defense. Offer to share gathered data with
the NRA.

Guns are used 2.5 million times a
year in self defense. They are used 80 times more often to protect the lives of
honest citizens than they are to kill or injure others. That word is not
getting out to the people and it needs to be publicized. This is newsworthy and
it provides information voters will appreciate.

Does the candidate support
responsible spending?

Establish a committee and an 800
number where people can call and give their experiences with irresponsible
government spending. Instead of writing press releases about what a wonderful
candidate you are, have a release written about the input you’re getting from
those who have experienced negligent over-spending.

Do you get the drift? There are a
lot of issues (energy, debt, regulations, medical care, Medicare, elder abuse,
banking, etc.) that provide positive ways to get publicity and which portray
candidates as do-ers rather than talkers. There are a lot of positive,
inexpensive ways to get publicity for a candidate and they strike a positive
note with voters who read about it.

Voters like candidates who do rather
than talk. Each committee is announced at different times (several stories
about a candidate’s establishment of a committee is better than one story that
announces all of the committees at once). And, reporting the information
provided to the committees by the public also generates good publicity.

The final element in running a
campaign to elect a non-traditional candidate involves email, Twitter and
social media like Facebook and LinkedIn. If you’re planning on running against
an elected politician in 2018, you need to start now. If you want your Tea
Party or Liberty Action or Citizens For Liberty group to be involved in getting
good candidates elected, you should have started doing what I suggest herein
two years ago.

Get lists of names of people who are
likely to support you during a Primary election... that would include all
registered Republicans and, depending on your issues, Libertarians. Your first
investment should be the purchase of lists of registered voters likely to vote
for you.

Your volunteers’ first phone call to them should be to ask if they
would like to receive your email updates and Twitters about the election, get
their addresses, and ask for their help.

Get one or two supporters to have a
give-away contest that is promoted via email and Twitter. Give away a good gun
or ammunition. When people register, you will automatically get their email
addresses if the contest is promoted via email. Give away a training class for
conceal carry (please note that the gifts are on topics of interest to
conservatives). Get a local restaurant to give a Friday night special dinner to
those who register for it... email address required. Use your imagination, but
get started gathering Twitter and email addresses.

And that's how you get
non-traditional conservative candidates elected to office. I would suggest you
make sure the candidate is really conservative... Colorado Tea Party groups
supported Corey Gardner and we got a neo-conservative who is half liberal. How
to do that?

That's another article.

At the end of Part 1 (last week) I
said Part 2 would be about getting non-traditional candidates elected and why
it’s good news that Hillary Clinton did not become our first female U.S.
President. I was more thorough in this material than I intended to be... so I
hope you enjoy Part 3: Hillary and the Electoral College (and the idiot
protesters).

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).